A love story/character study/send-up of the advertising business set in contemporary New York, "Truth in Advertising" follows the travails of Finbar Dolan ("Fin" for short, though he's anything but a shark). "Truth" is another entry into the midlife bildungsroman pioneered by writers like Nick Hornby, whose heroes are often grownups — but only on the outside.

Fin's on the rebound after calling off his nuptuals, and also dealing with the looming death of his father, a man he hasn't seen in 20 years and doesn't like much.

In some scenes, "Truth" reads like a contemporary response to "Mad Men." So much has changed in advertising since the 1960s of Don Draper and Co. (particularly the technology) and yet, so much hasn't. Banter between co-workers is often bawdy, bad behavior is sometimes rewarded, interoffice fraternizing is hardly discouraged, and products (in Fin's case, diapers) must be sold.

There are also shades of Frederic Wakeman's 1946 bestseller "The Hucksters," which was later made into a Clark Gable film. Both "Truth" and "Hucksters" alternately celebrate and skewer the advertising world to clever effect; in "Truth," the conversation between the client and the copywriter (held during a diaper shoot starring Gwy-neth Paltrow and a baby) is a window into the concurrent seriousness and absurdity of the business:

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Jan [the client] says again, "But is this too artsy for our brand?"

I say, "I'm hearing you say you think it might be too artsy."

Jan says, "I think that's what I'm saying, yes."

I say, "How so?"

Jan says, "The camera is moving around quite a bit. I'm not seeing the product."

I say, "Well, we're trying to focus on Gwyneth and the baby, but, as we discussed in the pre-production meeting, we wanted hip, cool and edgy along with the brand attributes of safe, homespun and conservative."

Jan says, "Agreed. But Gwy-neth and the baby aren't the product, Fin. The product is a Snugglie, the finest diaper in the world." You wait for the punch line but it never comes. People speak like this.

Fin is ripped from his quotidian duties with the news that his long-estranged father — a man who beat his brothers and abused his mother — is on his deathbed in Massachusetts.

He forgoes a planned Christmastime trip to Mexico to visit unconscious Dad in a Cape Cod ICU, arriving just soon enough to see him alive. Unhelpful siblings gather after the man's death; awkward meetings to determine how to articulate Dad's legacy ensue. There's not much love gained or lost in this family, but Kenney's able to create a sense of connection, even if the emotions are bleak at best.

Meanwhile, Fin's yin dallies dangerously with a much younger co-worker in one of the book's less convincing threads. Though their chemistry is sweet, and the resolution of their relationship mildly satisfying, the subplot is ultimately uncompelling.

What Kenney's best at is describing Fin's relationship with the book's most important character, New York City. Several scenes have Fin walking through the city's neighborhoods, and Kenney brings a New Yorker's sense of nuance to them. SoHo doesn't feel like Little Italy in his hands — because it shouldn't.

"What a thing it is to live in New York City," he writes. "I will take the flyer from the girl with the blue hair on the corner in the East Village and I will go to the show that starts at midnight in the basement of the building that looks like it might be condemned ... I will walk home at three in the morning after talking with the people in the show and making plans to get together the following weekend and I'll buy Sunday's newspaper that night, in a deli full of other people doing the same thing. People ordering a ham-and-cheese sandwich, in the middle of the night. I will feign coolness. I will slowly learn the art of not showing that I am surprised or impressed or moved. I will feel the elation that comes with anonymity."

In the passage, which carries on for a couple of pages, Kenney captures the unmistakable mind of a new arrival, recognizable to any once (and future?) New Yorker.

Fin's romantic life and family life are nowhere near as compelling as his relationship to his work and his city. What matters most, to Fin and to Kenney, is New York itself. Lovers of the city will find much to love in this relatable, redemptive, and sometimes very funny story.

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